Presentation

The Department of Design was created in 2013 from the InDACo (Industrial Design, Arts, Communication and Fashion)

Department as part of the reorganisation of the Politecnico di Milano departments.

Design means design

The Department is home to concepts and ideas from different cultures, which meet, dialogue and find an environment in which they can express a shared approach and purpose..

Interview with Silvia Piardi, Head of the Department of Design

This unity stems from having internalised the lessons of masters who have come before us: teaching which comes from looking at the world with an ever undeceived, critical gaze, which does not content itself with what is there, but which is continuously driven by the search for new equilibria in relations between people, objects and environments.

Teaching which comes from looking at the world with an ever undeceived, critical gaze, which does not content itself with what is there, but which is continuously driven by the search for new equilibria in relations between people, objects and environments".

Italy’s largest Design System

The 2017 QS World University Rankings place Politecnico di Milano seventh in the world, third in Europe and first in Italy in the area of Art & Design.

In recent years the Department of Design – which operates in unison with the School of Design and POLI.design, which complement it naturally – has come to represent the largest design department in Italy, rivalling centres of excellence at the international level.

Part of an extensive network of relationships, in a local context that is conducive to design and steeped in history, the department conducts research and provides training and consulting services in fields ranging from intangible design to the concrete artefacts that populate our world. What sets the department apart is a combination of the following elements:

the significance of design and its practices

as a key element of research and education; design has the peculiarity of giving shape to ideas and making them concrete in harmony with contemporary design languages;

the sharing of methods and tools,

which are continuously evolving, as a key element to support design: the various cores of the different areas of research cross-pollinate each other with regard to methods of analysis, narration, representation, communication, planning and production;

the capacity to act within the various processes of production of tangible and intangible goods,

focusing on the central role of the individual, the group, the community, and society as a whole: in its research and practice, the department works in the sectors of interior design, product design, communication, fashion, services and sustainability;

history and culture, as founding elements of design,

in an ongoing dialectic between the contemporary and historical roots;

a polytechnical approach,

that is, virtual and concrete coexistence with an extremely broad, diverse range of polytechnical subjects, in which design not only plays a mediating role but is also a critical element which steers activities towards design ends and methods.